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Friday, 19 October 2012

France’s
Socialist government has scrapped a French culture test for applicants
for French nationality as part of a programme of undoing
“discriminatory” measures introduced by previous President Nicolas
Sarkozy right-wing government.

Rights groups slammed the multiple-choice culture test when it was introduced by former interior minister Claude Guéant.

Parliamentary elections 2012

On Thursday his successor Manuel Valls, a naturalised French citizen
of Spanish origin, announced that he had ordered regional officials to
dump the measure along with a ruling that only long-term job contracts
would count as proof of employment.
From now on short-term job contracts and casual work will be taken
into account when assessing “professional insertion”, Valls said on a
visit to the south-western city of Toulouse.
But the ability to understand and speak French at the level expected
of 15-year-old native speaker will be maintained and Valls stressed that
candidates must accept the French republic’s core values, including
secularism and social solidarity.

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"You don't become French by answering multiple choice questions and I
reject the idea that only those with permanent employment contracts can
become French," Valls said.
But Eric Ciotti, the security spokesperson for Sarkozuy’s UMP party,
accused the Socialist minister of wanting to sell French nationality
cheap.
“Not just anyone who wants to can become French,” he said. “You have
to deserve French nationality and it must involve a certain effort.”

The number of naturalisations was 120,000 in 2010 but fell 30 per cent in the following year and 45 per cent in 2011-2012, Valls said.

Many of those naturalised are teenagers who were not born in France but
were brought up in the country and therefore have the right to
citizenship when they turn 18 if they ask for it.